Magnus Hirschfeld

In 1844, the foundation stone was laid for a new synagogue in Kolberg, where a Jewish community was first mentioned in a document in 1822. Magnus Hirschfeld was born in this small Pomeranian town on May 14, 1868, the seventh of eight children in the Jewish family of the doctor Hermann Hirschfeld and his wife Friederike. In later statements and autobiographical texts by Hirschfeld, there are no references to a religious life in his childhood and youth. “Only in a completely different context does Hirschfeld once mention that the family gathered at his grandmother's house on Friday evenings. We do not know whether the Shabbat was celebrated in the family circle on this occasion,” reports Hirschfeld researcher Ralf Dose. However, the father's dissertation in his CV states “Judaeus sum - I am a Jew”. He had received his doctorate from Berlin University in 1848. Magnus Hirschfeld's biographer Manfred Herzer describes this profession of faith by his father as the “only surviving indication of the family's religiousness”. However, it can be assumed that the Jewish religion certainly played a role in Hirschfeld's childhood. After all, his father sat for decades in the representative assembly of the Jewish community in Kolberg and was its chairman towards the end of his life. Nevertheless, Magnus Hirschfeld makes no reference to this either. Apparently he, the later doctor and socialist, deliberately concealed his Jewish origins. Biographer Herzer assumes that this was “a taboo, and the associated experiences of rejection and being an outsider are not accessible to reflection, at least as far as the written word is concerned, and are downright denied.” Herzer also quotes a sentence by Hirschfeld regarding his own position, which he allegedly wrote as a twelve-year-old and quoted several times in later life: “Man has four affiliations: he belongs to himself, to his family, to his fatherland and to humanity.” Hirschfeld's father died in June 1885. Two years later, Magnus Hirschfeld graduated from the Dom-Gymnasium in Kolberg.

After leaving school, Magnus Hirschfeld studied in Breslau, Strasbourg, Munich, Würzburg, Heidelberg and Berlin. He was initially enrolled to study modern languages, but then switched to studying medicine for “external reasons”, as he later wrote in his “Literary Self-Confession”. In April 1894, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld opened a practice as a “general practitioner and naturopath” in his home in Magdeburg's Neustadt district. This dual function was unusual, as naturopathy was still considered a specialty reserved for medical laymen at the time. However, Magnus Hirschfeld had already learned about the therapeutic benefits of sea, brine and mud baths from his father. The Social Democrat Magnus Hirschfeld had set up a “family doctor's fund” in Magdeburg in order to provide medical treatment to broad sections of the population for a small fee. Nachtweide 95 was also home to the “Sozialhygienische Lehranstalt” (Social Hygiene Institute), which was headed by the 26-year-old Hirschfeld. The following year, this institute was awarded the seal of approval of a “licensed naturopathic institute”.

Hirschfeld also gave lectures in Magdeburg for teachers and medical professionals on natural health care, the alcohol problem, school hygiene and first aid in the event of accidents. In spring 1895, the Neue Pädagogische Zeitung praised these teacher courses, which were “unique in Germany to date”. The medical profession in Magdeburg, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic about the naturopathic competitor with a doctorate. They tried to prove that he had committed malpractice on a patient with blood poisoning. This had consisted of withholding the allegedly “restorative alcohol” from the patient, as a result of which he ultimately died. A lawsuit was brought against Hirschfeld. However, the court refused to uphold the claim in its judgment. Magnus Hirschfeld, however, decided to leave Magdeburg. In 1896, he moved to Charlottenburg near Berlin in Prussia

Together with the publisher Max Spohr, the writer Franz Joseph von Bülow and the lawyer Eduard Oberg, Magnus Hirschfeld founded the “Scientific-Humanitarian Committee” in Charlottenburg (then still an independent city near Berlin) on May 15, 1897, and remained its chairman for 32 years. This committee was the world's first organization with the main goal of decriminalizing homosexuality. With the help of some of the Social Democratic members of the Reichstag, including SPD chairman August Bebel, the issue of Section 175, which criminalized male homosexuality, was put on the parliamentary agenda at the beginning of 1898. This was not politically successful, but the issue of homosexuality was debated in parliament and was thus suddenly brought to public attention. At the same time, it was the beginning of the world's first public gay rights movement, of which Magnus Hirschfeld can be described as the father. This brought conservative circles onto the scene. In 1907, the otherwise liberal Berlin daily newspaper “Der Tag” wrote: “The leaders of the Social Democrats are also behind the committee, and they are united. But they are striving for the collapse of our social order based on marriage ...”

From then on, Hirschfeld's main field of work was sexual science research, with which he also pursued a deeply humane goal. “Per scientiam ad justitiam” became his life motto: “Through science to justice!”. However, this was not easy in those days, and setbacks were inevitable. For example, a statistical survey on sexual orientation among students and metalworkers in May 1904 earned him a conviction for libel, but also the critical distancing of some members of his “scientific-humanitarian committee”.

In 1889/90, Hirschfeld had studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Munich for a time. He had traveled to Wörishofen to visit Pastor Sebastian Kneipp out of an interest in naturopathic treatments. Thirty years later, on October 4, 1920, Magnus Hirschfeld gave a lecture at his former place of study in Munich in which he discussed the theories of the Viennese sex researcher Eugen Steinach. According to these theories, a “cure” for homosexuality was possible through testicular transplantation. Hirschfeld had already referred several homosexuals to Steinach who had themselves castrated and had foreign testicles transplanted in the hope of becoming heterosexual. In the “Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen”, an annual publication of the “Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee” (Scientific-Humanitarian Committee), which he headed, Hirschfeld had even called on homosexual men to make themselves available for these experiments. According to his biographer Manfred Herzer, this temporary sympathy for Steinach's theory and practice was “one of the dark spots” in Hirschfeld's public work. Soon, however, Hirschfeld's sympathy for Steinach's theories gave way to a skeptical distancing.

When Magnus Hirschfeld left the Munich Tonhalle after his lecture, he was beaten up and seriously injured by nationalist students. From their perspective, he was a hate figure in three respects: as a homosexual, as a social democrat and as a Jew. However, his homosexuality was hardly known to the wider public in 1920. Newspaper reports of the attack at the time make it clear that it was motivated by anti-Semitism. As early as 1907, Hirschfeld had found a note outside his house in Berlin that read: “Dr. Hirschfeld a public danger - the Jews are our misfortune!” But in no other city in the German Reich had anti-Semitism developed as strongly as in Munich in such a short space of time after the First World War. As a result, the Bavarian police showed little interest in criminal investigations, which is why almost nothing is known about the perpetrators and their personal motives. Hirschfeld owes this robbery to the acquaintance of Karl Giese, who was sitting in the audience and came to his aid during the subsequent robbery. Giese later took over the archive of the Institute for Sexual Science and became not only an important colleague of Hirschfeld's, but also his life partner. Magnus Hirschfeld described the relationship as a “physical and emotional connection”.

On July 6, 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Science in a large old villa in Berlin's Tiergarten. It was the world's first institution for sexual research, which soon also became a contact point for transvestites and transsexuals. Hirschfeld published a “Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Stages” here for 23 years. He summarized the underlying theory as follows: “We understand sexual intermediates to be men with female and women with male characteristics.” Hirschfeld defined these intermediate stages in terms of a person's physical characteristics, character and desires, which he defined as innate and unchangeable. Gender-mixed types, of which he identified no fewer than 81 basic types, were the rule. Some of his theories may seem strange today in view of a medical-biological perspective, but his lasting merit lies in the fact that he freed homosexuality from the stigma of unnaturalness, as had been assumed until then.

In 1931, Magnus Hirschfeld set off on a trip around the world. He was not to see his Berlin research institute again. Hirschfeld was interested in almost everything he encountered in North America, Asia and the Orient: different cultures and gender relations, unusual marriage customs and foreign fertility rites. He informed himself about supposed sexual curiosities, the social causes of such deviant behavior and the respective sexual criminal law. This journey made him a eugenicist and thus part of the movement that wanted to solve humanity's social problems biologically, based on the theory of heredity that was popular at the time. Hirschfeld shared the opinion of other sex researchers of his time that there was a logical connection between sexology and eugenics and popularized it. For example, his “Society for Sexual Sciences” changed its name to “Society for Sexual Sciences and Eugenics” in 1913. The accusation that Hirschfeld was an advocate of coercive measures is often countered by pointing out that although he wanted to counteract “degeneration” through regulated reproduction, this should take place on a voluntary basis. Examples include sex education, voluntary contraception and the legalization of self-determined abortion. At the same time, however, Hirschfeld was very clearly in favor of coercive measures against those who, in his opinion, were not fit to make decisions about their own bodies. In Hirschfeld's opinion, forced sterilization should be permitted as a eugenic preventative measure for people who are “so mentally stupid that they are unable to be in command of themselves”. Accordingly, Hirschfeld was not against compulsory eugenic measures in principle, he just did not consider them equally necessary for all groups as a course of action against “degeneration”.

 At the same time, he recognized that the trivial racial doctrine of the Nazis was bound to lead to the exact opposite, namely intolerance of different ways of life. With wise foresight, Magnus Hirschfeld decided not to return to Germany. He went into exile in Paris via Vienna and Ascona at the beginning of 1933, shortly after Hitler had been appointed Reich Chancellor in Berlin.

In a Paris cinema, Magnus Hirschfeld saw newsreel footage of the burning of his writings in Berlin. The Nazis had meticulously planned the surprise coup. On the early Saturday morning of May 6, 1933 - four days before the publicly staged book burning - 100 Nazi students from the University of Physical Education had turned up at the Institute of Sexual Science. Supported by an SA troop and accompanied by a marching brass band, valuable books and documents were first thrown onto a truck and then into the fire on the Opernplatz on May 10.

Was this destructive action aimed at the homosexual Hirschfeld or the Jewish founder of the Hirschfeld Institute? Or both? The doctor Ludwig Levy-Lenz had a completely different assumption. Just a few months earlier, he had practiced at the Institute for Sexual Science and therefore knew that many Nazis had also been treated there. The Institute's records therefore contained information that they could not have been interested in making public.

In the Parisian “Eldorado”, Magnus Hirschfeld, the man with the huge moustache and artfully tied bow tie, was well known as Aunt Magnesia. The “ladies' imitators” who appeared in this establishment had come up with this nickname for Magnus Hirschfeld. From the early summer of 1933, this guest appeared regularly at the Eldorado - but never in women's clothing, as was later rumored. At that time, the genre term “travesty” - related to the word “transvestite” - was established for the art form of “female impersonators”. Today, hardly anyone knows that this term was invented by Magnus Hirschfeld. Many years before his exile in Paris, the sex researcher had created the term for the title of a publication: “The Transvestites - An Investigation into the Erotic Disguise Instinct, with Extensive Casuistic and Historical Material”.

After Magnus Hirschfeld had not returned to Berlin from his trip around the world, his partner Karl Giese traveled to Paris to join him. Here he discovered that Hirschfeld had found another partner in 23-year-old Li Shiu Tong, a budding doctor. They then had a ménage à trois in exile in France.

In Paris, Magnus Hirschfeld opened an “Institut des sciences sexologiques” together with the French doctor Edmond Zammert at no. 24 Avenue Charles Floquet. However, the fruitful collaboration did not last long. On May 14, 1935, Magnus Hirschfeld died in Nice in the south of France. It was his 67th birthday.